What has been distinctive about Jews over the centuries is that their
personality traits have been steeled by their Covenant with G-d and by
adversity. Starting out as a nomadic, patriarchal family tribe with
Avraham Avinu as the Patriarch, they were continually forced to come to
terms with their responsibilities under the Covenants of G-d with Avraham
in Charan, and with the Israelites at Sinai, and to fight battles against
others in defending themselves. After the nation was shattered in its
land, other approaches needed to be adopted both there and in their
Dispersion.

The Covenants have been the basic driving force for Jews, for they are
everlasting. As a single family under Avraham, a modest, hospitable,
strong, inspired religious/civil/military leader, the family members had a
passive role in expressing their religion. This same passive role held
later when the tribal structure existed for the Jews. This passive role
changed when in 950 BCE the First Temple was built and became a focal
center for sacrifices, and the people brought animals to the Cohanim in
Jerusalem for this purpose. After the destruction of the First Temple in
587 BCE, a quiet century was used by the Sofrim to redefine Judaism and to
redesign it as a personal religion with the active participation of
individual Jews. Methods of Jewish observance became portable, and
accompanied the Jews as they were cast into dispersion outside of
Palestine, throughout the Middle East, Europe, and North Africa.

In general, their early battles in the Land of Israel with enemies
became increasingly one-sided in favor of their more numerous and more
powerful enemies, and the Jews had to fall back on resources other than
power -- analytical ability, shrewdness, logical thinking, persuasiveness,
mobility, and other similar traits. Over time, these acquired traits
became a permanent facet of their ways of thinking and of their personality
as a People. This was particularly true in the Land of Israel and Europe
from the first century CE on, when Christendom ruled the world around the
Mediterranean basin, and when Jews were periodically persecuted and
massacred. While in "good" times in some countries of the Dispora these
traits tend to be submerged and downgraded in importance, it seems
(unfortunately) that in time they are returned to prominence by the
recurrence of anti-semitism and persecution.

Inevitably, these traits and their origins were a major factor, along
with the unique status of the Jews as the Chosen People, in their choice of
given names.

After the Israelite period (1200-586 BCE) when original Hebrew names
were still used, Jews in exile to foreign countries or under the yoke of
foreigners, adopted names from the lexicons of those foreign names. This
phenomenon began with the Babylonian exile and continued unabated during
subsequent centuries. Eventually, those foreign names which seemed
logically and phonetically correct to the Jewish ear became formal
sacred/Hebrew names, and were used in the synagogue and in legal Hebrew
documents.

Archeologists who do research in the Near East (Land of Israel,
Babylonia, etc.) normally define timelines as follows:

Prehistory

1,000,000-3300 BCE

Neolithic

8300-4500 BCE

Chalcolithic

4500-3200 BCE

Early Bronze Age

3200-2200 BCE

Middle Bronze Age

2200-1550 BCE

Late Bronze Age

1550-1200 BCE

Iron Age I

1200-1000 BCE

Iron Age II

1000-586 BCE

Babylonian Period

586-539 BCE

Persian Period

539-332 BCE

Hellenistic Period

332-141 BCE

Hasmonean Period

141-37 BCE

Roman Period

37 BCE-324 CE

Byzantine Period

324-638 CE

Arab Period

638-1516 CE

Crusader Period

1099-1516 CE

Ottoman Period

1517-1917 CE

For our purposes, the major periods of history may be divided as in
Table 1.

ANCIENT PERIOD

3150 BCE-500 CE

MIDDLE AGES

500-1500 CE

RENAISSANCE

1300-1700 CE

AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT

1700-1900 CE

MODERN PERIOD

1900-2000 CE

Table 1. Major Periods of Jewish History

The target period for the Given Names Project is 1795-1925, essentially
in the Age of Enlightenment period.